SoroushVahidi/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Coagulation and ablation patterns of high-intensity focused ultrasound on a tissue-mimicking phantom and cadaveric skin
(2015)

High-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) can be applied noninvasively to create focused zones of tissue coagulation on various skin layers. We performed a comparative study of HIFU, evaluating patterns of focused tissue coagulation and ablation upon application thereof. A tissue-mimicking (TM) phantom was prepared with bovine serum albumin and polyacrylamide hydrogel to evaluate the geometric patterns of HIFU-induced thermal injury zones (TIZs) for five different HIFU devices. Additionally, for each device, we investigated histologic patterns of HIFU-induced coagulation and ablation in serial sections of cadaveric skin of the face and neck. All HIFU devices generated remarkable TIZs in the TM phantom, with different geometric values of coagulation for each device. Most of the TIZs seemed to be separated into two or more tiny parts. In cadaveric skin, characteristic patterns of HIFU-induced ablation and coagulation were noted along the mid to lower dermis at the focal penetration depth of 3 mm and along subcutaneous fat to the superficial musculoaponeurotic system or the platysma muscle of the neck at 4.5 mm. Additionally, remarkable pre-focal areas of tissue coagulation were observed in the upper and mid dermis at the focal penetration depth of 3 mm and mid to lower dermis at 4.5 mm. For five HIFU devices, we outlined various patterns of HIFU-induced TIZ formation along pre-focal, focal, and post-focal areas of TM phantom and cadaveric skin of the face and neck.
Revising Immersion: A Conceptual Model for the Analysis of Digital Game Involvement
(2007)

Game studies literature has recently seen a renewed interest in game experience with the recent publication of a number of edited collections, dissertations and conferences focusing on the subject. This paper aims to contribute to that growing body of literature by presenting a summary of my doctoral research in digital game involvement and immersion. It outlines a segment of a conceptual model that describes and analyzes the moment by moment involvement with digital games on a variety of experiential dimensions corresponding to six broad categories of game features. The paper ends with a proposal to replace the metaphor of immersion with one of incorporation. Incorporation aims to avoid the binary notion of the player’s plunge into the virtual environment characteristic of “immersion” while dispelling the vagueness of application that all too often surrounds the term.
SpatialHadoop: towards flexible and scalable spatial processing using mapreduce
(2014)

Recently, MapReduce frameworks, e.g., Hadoop, have been used extensively in different applications that include tera-byte sorting, machine learning, and graph processing. With the huge volumes of spatial data coming from different sources, there is an increasing demand to exploit the efficiency of Hadoop, coupled with the flexibility of the MapReduce framework, in spatial data processing. However, Hadoop falls short in supporting spatial data efficiently as the core is unaware of spatial data properties. This paper describes SpatialHadoop; a full-edged MapReduce framework with native support for spatial data. SpatialHadoop is a comprehensive extension to Hadoop that injects spatial data awareness in each Hadoop layer, namely, the language, storage, MapReduce, and operations layers. In the language layer, SpatialHadoop adds a simple and ex- pressive high level language for spatial data types and operations. In the storage layer, SpatialHadoop adapts traditional spatial index structures, Grid, R-tree and R+-tree, to form a two-level spatial index. SpatialHadoop enriches the MapReduce layer by two new components, SpatialFileSplitter and SpatialRecordReader, for efficient and scalable spatial data processing. In the operations layer, SpatialHadoop is already equipped with a dozen of operations, including range query, kNN, and spatial join. The flexibility and open source nature of SpatialHadoop allows more spatial operations to be implemented efficiently using MapReduce. Extensive experiments on a real system prototype and real datasets show that SpatialHadoop achieves orders of magnitude better performance than Hadoop for spatial data processing.
Impact of a workplace stress reduction program on blood pressure and emotional health in hypertensive employees.
(2003)

OBJECTIVES
This study examined the impact of a workplace-based stress management program on blood pressure (BP), emotional health, and workplace-related measures in hypertensive employees of a global information technology company.


DESIGN
Thirty-eight (38) employees with hypertension were randomly assigned to a treatment group that received the stress-reduction intervention or a waiting control group that received no intervention during the study period. The treatment group participated in a 16-hour program, which included instruction in positive emotion refocusing and emotional restructuring techniques intended to reduce sympathetic nervous system arousal, stress, and negative affect, increase positive affect, and improve performance. Learning and practice of the techniques was enhanced by heart rate variability feedback, which helped participants learn to self-generate physiological coherence, a beneficial physiologic mode associated with increased heart rhythm coherence, physiologic entrainment, parasympathetic activity, and vascular resonance. BP, emotional health, and workplace-related measures were assessed before and 3 months after the program.


RESULTS
Three months post-intervention, the treatment group exhibited a mean adjusted reduction of 10.6 mm Hg in systolic BP and of 6.3 mm Hg in diastolic BP. The reduction in systolic BP was significant in relation to the control group. The treatment group also demonstrated improvements in emotional health, including significant reductions in stress symptoms, depression, and global psychological distress and significant increases in peacefulness and positive outlook. Reduced systolic BP was correlated with reduced stress symptoms. Furthermore, the trained employees demonstrated significant increases in the work-related scales of workplace satisfaction and value of contribution.


CONCLUSIONS
Results suggest that a brief workplace stress management intervention can produce clinically significant reductions in BP and improve emotional health among hypertensive employees. Implications are that such interventions may produce a healthier and more productive workforce, enhancing performance and reducing losses to the organization resulting from cognitive decline, illness, and premature mortality.
IL-17 and Th17 Cells.
(2009)

CD4+ T cells, upon activation and expansion, develop into different T helper cell subsets with different cytokine profiles and distinct effector functions. Until recently, T cells were divided into Th1 or Th2 cells, depending on the cytokines they produce. A third subset of IL-17-producing effector T helper cells, called Th17 cells, has now been discovered and characterized. Here, we summarize the current information on the differentiation and effector functions of the Th17 lineage. Th17 cells produce IL-17, IL-17F, and IL-22, thereby inducing a massive tissue reaction owing to the broad distribution of the IL-17 and IL-22 receptors. Th17 cells also secrete IL-21 to communicate with the cells of the immune system. The differentiation factors (TGF-beta plus IL-6 or IL-21), the growth and stabilization factor (IL-23), and the transcription factors (STAT3, RORgammat, and RORalpha) involved in the development of Th17 cells have just been identified. The participation of TGF-beta in the differentiation of Th17 cells places the Th17 lineage in close relationship with CD4+CD25+Foxp3+ regulatory T cells (Tregs), as TGF-beta also induces differentiation of naive T cells into Foxp3+ Tregs in the peripheral immune compartment. The investigation of the differentiation, effector function, and regulation of Th17 cells has opened up a new framework for understanding T cell differentiation. Furthermore, we now appreciate the importance of Th17 cells in clearing pathogens during host defense reactions and in inducing tissue inflammation in autoimmune disease.
Variational mesh segmentation via quadric surface fitting
(2012)

Wepresent a new variationalmethod formesh segmentation by fitting quadric surfaces. Each component of the resulting segmentation is represented by a general quadric surface (including plane as a special case). A novel energy function is defined to evaluate the quality of the segmentation, which combines both L2 and L2,1 metrics from a triangle to a quadric surface. The Lloyd iteration is used to minimize the energy function, which repeatedly interleaves between mesh partition and quadric surface fitting. We also integrate feature-based and simplification-based techniques in the segmentation framework, which greatly improve the performance. The advantages of our algorithm are demonstrated by comparing with the state-of-the-art methods. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Extracting Opinion Expressions with semi-Markov Conditional Random Fields
(2012)

Extracting opinion expressions from text is usually formulated as a token-level sequence labeling task tackled using Conditional Random Fields (CRFs). CRFs, however, do not readily model potentially useful segment-level information like syntactic constituent structure. Thus, we propose a semi-CRF-based approach to the task that can perform sequence labeling at the segment level. We extend the original semi-CRF model (Sarawagi and Cohen, 2004) to allow the modeling of arbitrarily long expressions while accounting for their likely syntactic structure when modeling segment boundaries. We evaluate performance on two opinion extraction tasks, and, in contrast to previous sequence labeling approaches to the task, explore the usefulness of segmentlevel syntactic parse features. Experimental results demonstrate that our approach outperforms state-of-the-art methods for both opinion expression tasks.
The GUM corpus: creating multilayer resources in the classroom
(2017)

This paper presents the methodology, design principles and detailed evaluation of a new freely available multilayer corpus, collected and edited via classroom annotation using collaborative software. After briefly discussing corpus design for open, extensible corpora, five classroom annotation projects are presented, covering structural markup in TEI XML, multiple part of speech tagging, constituent and dependency parsing, information structural and coreference annotation, and Rhetorical Structure Theory analysis. Layers are inspected for annotation quality and together they coalesce to form a richly annotated corpus that can be used to study the interactions between different levels of linguistic description. The evaluation gives an indication of the expected quality of a corpus created by students with relatively little training. A multifactorial example study on lexical NP coreference likelihood is also presented, which illustrates some applications of the corpus. The results of this project show that high quality, richly annotated resources can be created effectively as part of a linguistics curriculum, opening new possibilities not just for research, but also for corpora in linguistics pedagogy.
Situationally Aware In-Car Information Presentation Using Incremental Speech Generation: Safer, and More Effective
(2014)

Holding non-co-located conversations while driving is dangerous (Horrey and Wickens, 2006; Strayer et al., 2006), much more so than conversations with physically present, “situated” interlocutors (Drews et al., 2004). In-car dialogue systems typically resemble non-co-located conversations more, and share their negative impact (Strayer et al., 2013). We implemented and tested a simple strategy for making in-car dialogue systems aware of the driving situation, by giving them the capability to interrupt themselves when a dangerous situation is detected, and resume when over. We show that this improves both driving performance and recall of system-presented information, compared to a non-adaptive strategy.
Predictive maintenance techniques
(2009)

This article discusses the importance of PdM for industrial process applications and investigates a number of emerging technologies that enable this approach, including online energy-efficiency evaluation and continuous condition monitoring. The article gives an overview of existing and future technologies that can be used in these areas. Two methods for bearing fault detection and energy-efficiency estimation are discussed. The article concludes with focus on one pilot installation at Weyerhaeuser's Containerboard Packaging Plant in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, USA, monitoring three critical induction motors: a 75-hrho blower motor, a 50-hrho hydraulic pump motor, and a 200-hp compressor motor. Finally, the field experience gained in this plant is presented as two case studies.
Spectral analysis of surface electromyography (EMG) of upper esophageal sphincter-opening muscles during head lift exercise.
(2000)

Although recent studies have shown enhancement of deglutitive upper esophageal sphincter opening in healthy elderly patients performing an isometric/isotonic head lift exercise (HLE), the muscle groups affected by this process are not known. A shift in the spectral analysis of surface EMG activity seen with muscle fatigue can be used to identify muscles affected by an exercise. The objective of this study was to use spectral analysis to evaluate surface EMG activities in the suprahyoid (SHM), infrahyoid (IHM), and sternocleidomastoid (SCM) muscle groups during the HLE. Surface EMG signals were recorded continuously on a TECA Premiere II during two phases of the HLE protocol in eleven control subjects. In the first phase of the protocol, surface EMG signals were recorded simultaneously from the three muscle groups for a period of 20 s. In the second phase, a 60 s recording was obtained for each of three successive trials with individual muscle groups. The mean frequency (MNF), median frequency (MDF), root mean square (RMS), and average rectified value (ARV) were used as spectral variables to assess the fatigue of the three muscle groups during the exercise. Least squares regression lines were fitted to each variable data set. Our findings suggest that during the HLE the SHM, IHM, and SCM muscle groups all show signs of fatigue; however, the SCM muscle group fatigued faster than the SHM and IHM muscle groups. Because of its higher fatigue rate, the SCM muscle group may play a limiting role in the HLE.
ZStream: a cost-based query processor for adaptively detecting composite events
(2009)

Composite (or Complex) event processing (CEP) systems search sequences of incoming events for occurrences of user-specified event patterns. Recently, they have gained more attention in a variety of areas due to their powerful and expressive query language and performance potential. Sequentiality (temporal ordering) is the primary way in which CEP systems relate events to each other. In this paper, we present a CEP system called ZStream to efficiently process such sequential patterns. Besides simple sequential patterns, ZStream is also able to detect other patterns, including conjunction, disjunction, negation and Kleene closure.
 Unlike most recently proposed CEP systems, which use non-deterministic finite automata (NFA's) to detect patterns, ZStream uses tree-based query plans for both the logical and physical representation of query patterns. By carefully designing the underlying infrastructure and algorithms, ZStream is able to unify the evaluation of sequence, conjunction, disjunction, negation, and Kleene closure as variants of the join operator. Under this framework, a single pattern in ZStream may have several equivalent physical tree plans, with different evaluation costs. We propose a cost model to estimate the computation costs of a plan. We show that our cost model can accurately capture the actual runtime behavior of a plan, and that choosing the optimal plan can result in a factor of four or more speedup versus an NFA based approach. Based on this cost model and using a simple set of statistics about operator selectivity and data rates, ZStream is able to adaptively and seamlessly adjust the order in which it detects patterns on the fly. Finally, we describe a dynamic programming algorithm used in our cost model to efficiently search for an optimal query plan for a given pattern.
Environmental implications of plastic debris in marine settings--entanglement, ingestion, smothering, hangers-on, hitch-hiking and alien invasions.
(2009)

Over the past five or six decades, contamination and pollution of the world's enclosed seas, coastal waters and the wider open oceans by plastics and other synthetic, non-biodegradable materials (generally known as 'marine debris') has been an ever-increasing phenomenon. The sources of these polluting materials are both land- and marine-based, their origins may be local or distant, and the environmental consequences are many and varied. The more widely recognized problems are typically associated with entanglement, ingestion, suffocation and general debilitation, and are often related to stranding events and public perception. Among the less frequently recognized and recorded problems are global hazards to shipping, fisheries and other maritime activities. Today, there are rapidly developing research interests in the biota attracted to freely floating (i.e. pelagic) marine debris, commonly known as 'hangers-on and hitch-hikers' as well as material sinking to the sea floor despite being buoyant. Dispersal of aggressive alien and invasive species by these mechanisms leads one to reflect on the possibilities that ensuing invasions could endanger sensitive, or at-risk coastal environments (both marine and terrestrial) far from their native habitats.
A Fast Quantum Mechanical Algorithm for Database Search
(1996)

were proposed in the early 1980’s [Benioff80] and shown to be at least as powerful as classical computers an important but not surprising result, since classical computers, at the deepest level, ultimately follow the laws of quantum mechanics. The description of quantum mechanical computers was formalized in the late 80’s and early 90’s [Deutsch85][BB92] [BV93] [Yao93] and they were shown to be more powerful than classical computers on various specialized problems. In early 1994, [Shor94] demonstrated that a quantum mechanical computer could efficiently solve a well-known problem for which there was no known efficient algorithm using classical computers. This is the problem of integer factorization, i.e. testing whether or not a given integer, N, is prime, in a time which is a finite power of o (logN) . ----------------------------------------------
Quantum Inspired Genetic Algorithms
(1996)

|A novel evolutionary computing method | quantum inspired genetic algorithms | is introduced, where concepts and principles of quantum mechanics are used to inform and inspire more eecient evolutionary computing methods. The basic terminology of quantum mechanics is introduced before a comparison is made between a classical genetic algorithm and a quantum inspired method for the travelling salesperson problem. It is informally shown that the quantum inspired genetic algorithm performs better than the classical counterpart for a small domain. The paper concludes with some speculative comments concerning the relationship between quantum inspired genetic algorithms and various complexity classes.
A Path-Tracking Criterion for an LHD Articulated Vehicle
(1999)

A path-tracking criterion for the so-called LHD (load-haul-dump) truck used in underground mining is proposed in this paper. It exploits the particular configuration of this vehicle, composed of two units connected by an actuated articulation. The task is to follow the path represented by the middle of the tunnel, maintaining the whole vehicle at a reduced distance from the path itself, to decrease the risk of crashes against the walls of the tunnel. This is accomplished via feedback through the synthesis of an appropriate path-tracking criterion. The criterion is based on monitoring the distances of the midpoints of both axles of the vehicle from their orthogonal projections on the path, using two different moving frames simultaneously. Local asymptotic stability to paths of constant curvature is achieved by means of linear-state feedback. KEY WORDS—mobile robots, articulated vehicles, mining trucks, path tracking, off-tracking, feedback stabilization
A Multilingual Multimedia Indian Sign Language Dictionary Tool
(2008)

This paper presents a cross platform multilingual multimedia Indian Sign Language (ISL) dictionary building tool. ISL is a linguistically under-investigated language with no source of well documented electronic data. Research on ISL linguistics also gets hindered due to a lack of ISL knowledge and the unavailability of any educational tools. Our system can be used to associate signs corresponding to a given text. The current system also facilitates the phonological annotation of Indian signs in the form of HamNoSys structure. The generated HamNoSys string can be given as input to an avatar module to produce an animated sign representation.
Detection and Recognition of Malaysian Special License Plate Based On SIFT Features
(2015)

Automated car license plate recognition systems are developed and applied for purpose of facilitating the surveillance, law enforcement, access control and intelligent transportation monitoring with least human intervention. In this paper, an algorithm based on SIFT feature points clustering and matching is proposed to address the issue of recognizing Malaysian special plates. These special plates do not follow the normal standard car plates’ format as they may contain italic, cursive, connected and small letters. The algorithm is tested with 150 Malaysian special plate images under different environment and the promising experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is relatively robust. Keywords-license plate recognition, scale invariant feature transform (SIFT), feature extraction, homography, special license plate.
Low power and low voltage VT extractor circuit and MOSFET radiation dosimeter
(2012)

This work discusses two fundamental blocks of an in vivo MOS dosimeter, namely the radiation sensor and the VT-extractor circuit. It is shown that threshold extractor circuits based on an all-region MOSFET model are very appropriate for low power design. The accuracy of the extractor circuits allows using the PMOS transistors of the integrated circuit CD4007 as the radiation sensor in a dosimeter for radiotherapy applications.
Control of hybrid AC/DC microgrid involving energy storage, renewable energy and pulsed loads
(2015)

This paper proposes the coordinated control of a hybrid AC/DC power system with renewable energy source, energy storages and critical loads. The hybrid microgrid consists of both AC and DC sides. A synchronous generator and a PV farm supply power to the system's AC and DC sides, respectively. A bidirectional fully controlled AC/DC converter with active and reactive power decoupling technique is used to link the AC bus with the DC bus while regulating the system voltage and frequency. A DC/DC boost converter with a maximum power point tracking (MPPT) function is implemented to maximize the energy generation from the PV farm. Current controlled bidirectional DC/DC converters are applied to connect each lithium-ion battery bank to the DC bus. Lithium-ion battery banks act as energy storage devices that serve to increase the system stability by absorbing or injecting power to the grid as ancillary services. The proposed system can function in both grid-connected mode and islanding mode. Power electronic converters with different control strategies are analyzed in both modes in detail. Simulation results in MATLAB Simulink verify that the proposed topology is coordinated for power management in both AC and DC sides under critical loads with high efficiency, reliability, and robustness under both grid-connected and islanding modes.